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  • (Re)thinking the (Post)Nation(al), Europe, and (Trans)culture/ality
  • Bavjola Shatro (bio)
Cosmopolitanism and the Postnational; Literature and the New Europe. By Cesar Dominguez and Theo D'haen. Leiden, the Netherlands: Rodopi, 2015. 250 pp. Paperback $ 85.00.
Form and Instability; Eastern Europe, Literature, Postimperial Difference. By Anita Starosta. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2016. 22 pp. Paperback $ 34.95.
Transcultural Writers and Novel in the Age of Global Mobility. By Arianna Dagnino. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2015. 240 pp. Paperback $ 45.00.

These books represent three unquestionable contributions in the fields of cosmopolitanism, transcultural studies, world literature(s) studies, and comparative literature. They address in innovative and challenging ways several persistent questions in these fields as well as pose new crucial questions that will impact the future developments of these domains and their theoretical paradigms. All books successfully apply multiple theoretical approaches which allow for a wide and inclusive scholarly debate on the meaning and implications of globalism, (European, regional) identity, literature, figurality, culture, the (post) national, Europe(annes), Eurocentrism, and translation today.

Cosmopolitanism and the Postnational; Literature and the New Europe edited by Cesar Dominguez and Theo D'haen is a selection of essays that explores further the meaning and complexity of the terms cosmopolitanism, [End Page 869] postnational, and N/new Europe (1) and the most important phenomena related to them in the present political and cultural moment in Europe.

The contributors of this volume keep a vivid dialogue with the work of eminent scholars in the field of world literature studies, comparative literature, and so on, and add significant input in the academic debates in these fields. The book elaborates on: (a) the concepts of institutionalized cosmopolitanism and deformed cosmopolitanism (3); (b) the role of the postnational in understanding the relationship between national references and the prospects of a European identity (1); (c) the possible equivalence of the terms cosmopolitanism and postnational, and so on. Aspects of European (and Eastern European) identity are originally addressed also in the other two books and each of them analyzes through distinct theoretical approaches the meaning of the postnational and transnationalism for the future of Europe in the present global contexts.

Cosmopolitanism and the Postnational consists of three parts and an Introduction. Part 1, Challenging Postnationalism/Cosmopolitanism comprises four essays which revolve around cosmopolitanism reconsidered in relation to the concepts of world literature, post- and transnationalism (6). It emphasizes the fact that Europe is a concept that we are continuously reconsidering and revising and offers two critiques on: (a) Eurocentrism and (b) presentism (Europe Between Old and New: Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered). The author elaborates on different aspects of European approaches to literature such as travel literature, migration, supranational instances of literary production, and so on (13). According to the author, the passage from nationalism to postnationalism is not yet possible but "a transnationalist, postcolonial and post-Holocaust multiperspective view will help us recognize different and therefore richer dimensions of European history and culture, in the past as well as in the present" (24).

Another issue explored in this book is how novels negotiate European integration and thus contribute to the reimagining of European culture and Europeanization. The author considers the theories of Benedict Anderson, Ulrich Beck and elaborates on "cosmopolitan reading" (27) through the novels of Joaquin Lorente, Angel Burgas, and Tim Parks.

In the other two books, there is a strong emphasis on novels too and although analyzed in dissimilar lights—Transcultural Writers highlights the transcending of genres and the way lived transcultural experiences of the writers influence their work; From and Instability on the other hand elaborates on rhetoric, language, allegory, irony, and so on, in establishing the essential role of reading as a method of knowledge in crossing national and regional borders in literature—they underline the role of the novel in a transcultural and postnational perspective. [End Page 870]

Cosmopolitanism and the Postnational examines also what constitutes "new European literature" and further explores the potential of key concepts such as postnational and cosmopolitanism, and their impact on the "new European literature." The author of the essay explores literary genres and proposes the hybrid genre of Menippean satire "as an inherently cosmopolitan and trans-national genre...

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